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"THE MOST INTERESTING AND RICHLY TEXTURED CRIME STORY OF THE SEASON." — --Time — The year is 1872. The place is Wigan, England, a coal town where rich mine owners live lavishly alongside miners no better than slaves. Into this dark complicated world comes Jonathan Blair, who has accepted a commission to find a missing man. As he begins his search ... more »every road leads back to one woman, a haughty, vixenish pit girl named Rose. With her fiery hair and skirts pinned up over trousers, she cares nothing for a society that calls her unnatural, scandalous, erotic. As Rose and Blair circle one another, first warily, then with the heat of mutual desire, Blair loses his balance. And the lull induced by Rose's sensual touch leaves him unprepared for the bizarre, soul scorching truth. . . .

"[SMITH] AT THE TOP OF HIS FORM. . . . It is fun, the well-plotted, dense fun of an intelligent, shadowy, literary enigma. . . . Brisk and edifying entertainment."

--The New York Times

"SUPERIOR . . . Rose has one of those powerfully involving plots that keeps you in an enjoyable dither, eager to turn the pages and reluctant to reach the last one."

Top Member Book Reviews

This book seems to have won grand reviews all over. I hope you believe them so that you will order my copy. But in all honesty...the character development is just plain awful. Everyone is a caricature of Old England except for the hero -- an entirely modern creature who so admiringly fights sexism, racism, imperialism, oppression and bad taste or anything else that offends our sensibilities. And the "dense" and "challenging" mystery can be solved from a mile away as soon as the author lets the clues drop. Avoid the hype, save your credit for something else.

The story is set in the English coal producing town of Wegan in the 1870's. It starts out with a British engineer who longs to return to Africa and to his little daughter. But first he must solve a mystery of the disappearance of the fiance of the Bishops daughter in order to earn the money for his passage.
One of the interesting aspects of this tale is the view of the class structure during the Victorian period and the insights into British culture. This book is charming and suspenseful and will keep you guessing until the very end.